


Prayers

by baNINA_bread



Series: What A Wonderful World [2]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Mention of Death, Oneshot, Other, a vignette, hints of electrical water torture, if you read Children of the Moon and the Sea, yeah you kinda have to read COTMAS to understand why this shit is going down sorry, you'll know where this fits into the timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6554197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baNINA_bread/pseuds/baNINA_bread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A super-short oneshot, a vignette if you will, of one of Patrick's experiences at the Institute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prayers

**Author's Note:**

> here's a little something to make up for the update im still writing. i am so so sorry for hurting Patrick and Elisa this way. tagged it with violence, just in case.

 

It's bright in Patrick's room. It's always been too bright. Even with the crisp white smocks they made him wear, he always feels so exposed under the strip bulbs overhead. The lights hurt, and it doesn't help that he hasn't slept naturally in three days.

The drugs do that, sometimes. It keeps him awake. Sometimes, when he's lucky, it knocks him out.

He winces as he staggers to the wall on the opposite side of his bed, shooting the camera lodged into a corner of the ceiling a nasty look. The clear glass panel has been covered, reinforced and painted over with white, because the people tending to him thought he would try to break it. He presses an ear to the wall.

He needs to make sure Elisa is still alive.

 

***

 

Elisa Yao is Patrick's only friend at the Institute. Everyone else he'd met died somewhere along the way, which was a shame, really. Because of the Institute's incessant testing for re-breeding and interbreeding endangered Other species, some lines have died out. It was depressing, knowing that the world would never get to see another Harpie, or another Southern Silver Wolf again. Hayley and Alex were such amazing people, and far too young for what they'd gone through.

Elisa is an Eastern Gilded mermaid. Not the last of her kind yet, but her family was dwindling in number, so the Institute plucked her from the Southern Pacific and kept her in a room with a large water tank. Patrick still remembers the awe he felt when he first looked into the little glass window that separated their rooms—a tank big enough for a shark, dark hair that curled through the water like little noodles, and an unseemly, out-of-place pair of legs where a tail should have been.

“The thing with us Gilded folk,” she had said, “is that we can choose when to become Gilded folk.”

 

***

 

As Patrick listens for her gentle voice humming absentmindedly, he is greeted with a scream and numerous splashings of water.

Ah, right. It was a Wednesday today. Wednesdays were lab test days. Patrick feels tears slip through his lashes. After all this time, he's lost all belief in God already, but right now he prays. He prays through Elisa's screams, he prays that this test wouldn't involve electricity again, like the last time. He still gets nightmares about the vacant look in her eyes, hours after she was tested a month ago. He prays for drugs instead, strong ones, because praying for the lesser evil still counts. He shuts his eyes and twines his fingers until his knuckles turn white, and prays, and prays, and prays.

Soon Elisa's screams fade to nothing. Patrick hears the bolts of his door unlatch. Suddenly, he forgets about praying for the drugs. As three Institute testers close in on him in the corner of his room, he wishes he was dead instead.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i might post more if i don't finish the new chapter by next week. sorry for the delay!!  
> yeeeeah..... alex and hayley aren't going to be in the other stories in this au....... i am so sorry......


End file.
